The Potomac

I really don’t think that the Potomac River gets the respect that it deserves.

It’s nowhere near, at just over 400 miles/650 kilometers or so, one of North America’s longest rivers. Its outflow into the Chesapeake Bay is about 1/600th of what the Mississippi River discharges into the Gulf of Mexico. But for the sheer amount of U.S. history that has taken place on and immediately around it, the Potomac is hard to beat. That, and it and the things nearby are really beautiful all along the river’s length.

I’ll be riding immediately alongside the north bank of the Potomac for the first week on my way to Kansas City. It will be a great experience, I’m sure, and I am looking forward to sharing it.

Pop Quiz: Can you, without looking it up on Google or taking longer than a minute or two, name ten of the great national rivers of the United States? By national I mean a river that flows in or borders more than one state, so rivers like the Illinois and St. Lawrence, great as they might be in their own right, don’t count here. Try to do this- it’s harder than it looks at first glance.